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prologue
JACK
Gatheringmy hair at the back of my head in one hand, I pulled the hair tie from between my teeth and made sure the bun was tight before I pushed my shirt sleeves up my arms.The dark ink that took up both forearms told a story I couldn’t give voice to, but they never failed to inject a little more fear into the men who were the true monsters of the world.
Like the one lying on the floor in front of me.Blood dripped down his face from where my first punch had busted his nose and knocked him on his ass.Stupid fuck had opened the door without even checking to see who it was.He hadn’t even glanced up from the phone in his hand to greet me.
All I’d gotten was a muttered, “Yeah?”before I’d swung at him.But he sure as fuck was looking at me now as he tried to crab walk backward when I took a step forward.
“Wh-what do you want?”he stuttered.“I-I ain’t got no money.”
“I’m not here for money,” I assured him as I closed the door and flipped the lock and dead bolt while the guy looked like he was about to piss himself at the sound of my voice.
I rarely used it, so it always came out raspy.Talking wasn’t my thing.I watched.Listened.What good were words when they never made anything better?My mother would argue with me.Words could go a long way, in her opinion.But she was a lawyer; words were her bread and butter.
I hadn’t had any desire to follow in her footsteps, so she was going to have to find someone else to take over her law firm when she decided to hang it up.Whenever the fuck that might be.She loved her work.Not just the thrill of fighting a case in court, but her nonprofit that she’d started in honor of her own mother, who had died at the hands of an abusive husband.
Much like the piece of shit who was looking up at me with terror in his bloodshot eyes.He was sober for once, but it was obvious he hadn’t gotten much sleep.His clothes were wrinkled, and there was a stain on his untucked, button-down white shirt.Without his wife to take care of him, the man probably didn’t even know what day it was.
I knew all about their married life from listening to the wife sobbing to some of the volunteers at Sanctuary.No way she would tell me herself.All the residents at the shelter were too scared to do more than shoot me terror-filled glances whenever I was in the room with them.They didn’t know that I would be their vengeance.That I was there to protect them from the monsters from their past and present so they could have a better future.
For most of their married life, the woman had been more like a maid who had to be on call for his every need, twenty-four seven.Then he’d gotten her pregnant, and she’d had to split her attention between him and their kid.He hadn’t liked that much.The verbal beatdowns he’d occasionally given her had started turning into physical abuse.And as happened with most of the domestic violence victims I’d seen all my life, he’d already had her thinking she was useless and had nowhere to go.
It wasn’t until their kid was older, and he’d turned his abuse in the little girl’s direction, that his wife had finally gotten brave and decided to leave him.Before she could get out, though, the bastard had discovered her plans and beaten her to within an inch of her life.Luckily, their daughter had gotten her mom’s phone and hidden in a closet.The 9-1-1 dispatcher had listened along with the little girl while her mom begged for mercy.
The cops got to their house just as the sack of shit had finished up with his wife and then had started to go after the little girl in the closet.Even though they lived several counties away, Sanctuary was well known to social services, and both mother and daughter were brought to us once the mom had been released from the hospital.They were in one of the apartments at the main house, still under a doctor’s care by the medical staff Sanctuary employed.The mom would need to heal physically as well as mentally, and the little girl was still so traumatized that she hadn’t spoken more than a few words since their arrival the week before.
It was seeing the fear in those eyes that had me here now.
The only thing the little girl said to anyone was to beg us not to let her father find them.Her daddy wasn’t going to get the chance to find her or her mother.
I might not have spoken the words aloud, but I’d made a vow to her the moment she’d crawled under the table in the social room of Sanctuary.Seeing little Molly clutch the ragged bear to her chest and glance around as if there was danger all around her had haunted me.I hadn’t slept much since, and I knew from past experience that I wouldn’t get a good night’s rest until I took care of what that little girl was most afraid of.
“Then what do ya want?”
I popped my neck left and right, getting the tension out of my shoulders before the fun started.Instead of answering, I gave the bastard a grin and pulled the blade from the sheath strapped to my leg.
With a scared whimper, he pissed himself, and a dark laugh bubbled up inside me.Ah, fuck yeah.I loved when they couldn’t control their bodily functions because they were too afraid.I imagined their spouses had felt similar fear.
By the time I was done, the fucker would feel every ounce of fear his wife and child still suffered.
And it would be the last thing he experienced before I sent him straight to hell where he belonged.
“P-please,” he cried, scuttling backward out of the puddle of piss he’d left behind.“I-I have a-a family, a-a daughter.”
“Don’t worry, motherfucker.Molly won’t miss a piece-of-shit father like you.She’s going to have a good life now.”I bent and stabbed the blade through his shoe so hard it got embedded in the hardwood floor beneath.His scream of pain echoed off the walls, but the nearest neighbor was several acres away.
That was why no one had ever heard Molly’s mother screaming or crying each time he beat her.
Realization dawned in his glazed eyes, and that was when the real fun began.
CHAPTERONE
jack
Walking up the stairs,I scrubbed my hands over my scruff.I was tired after my usual Saturday shift at Hannigans’.Thursdays were church at the bar, but Fridays and Saturdays, we were open to the public, and we required all hands on deck to keep things from getting crazy.
My cousin, uncles, and Dad were all there to help out, but we still had trouble keeping up.Between the locals, college kids, and travelers who came from all over the country to get ink from Lyric Thornton, we never knew what each weekend would bring.
